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Hi there, I was just curious as to who or how many webmasters in this forum spoke other languages..that's it. I know my French is not great for writing but I can hold my own when speaking to the everyday person about most general things. If I had to present a business proposal for my internet business I'd be a little out of my league for the vocab though. I'm trying to learn Spanish next.

- Dutch: near to perfect in writing, reading and speaking (I can understand 100% of a conversation)
- German: near to perfect in speaking and reading, good in writing (I can understand 100% of a conversation)
- French: good in speaking, writing and speaking (I can understand 95% of a conversation)
- English: good in speaking, writing and speaking
- Italian: I only know a little Italian, but basically I can understand 70% of all words when I read an Italian text. This is because I have done 3 years of Latin not so long ago.

BTW.... Dutch and German are my maternal languages and there is a french speaking part in Belgium on 30 km from my place and we get it 4 hours/week in class and last years that was even 5 hours. English I learnt on the net and a TINY bit in school.

If you can speak three lanuages you are trilingual.
If you can speak two languages you are bilingual.
If you can speak one language you are English.

We are sooooo behind the rest of Europe when it comes to languages. I went to the Netherlands a while ago and was waiting in a queue at a bakers. There were about five other tourists in front of me, and the person that served them spoke to each in their own language, made me feel very small.

I think we're still kind of stuck in an Empire mentality. Because everyone else speaks English we (as a nation) don't seem to make the effort to learn others. I think we'll come unstuck because of it. Being an island can't help.

Did you know that English has more than double the number of words than any other language. I guess that's how we can have a game show like 'Call My Bluff', so many words in our own language that we don't even know the meaning of.

I'm talking French too! < It's my maternal language!
Also some Spanish and Italian.
I' have been living in the South of France for many years. Since to me the girls in the country next to mine sounded more attractive than the one in my country, I have been pretty often in Spain and Italy.
I can talk a little bit of Spanish and Italian, but not much. On the other hand I understand most of what can be said.
I'm supposed to be able to talk German, but I'm not. I learned German at school, 2 years who sounded pretty long to me! I never used it and totally forget about it.
I can not talk Latin, but can do pretty good translation, it's also something I learned at school. There is not a real purpose of being able to do anything with Latin, except perhaps the fact that it's really helping in French, Italian, and even Spanish. Even on the churches they are not using Latin anymore.
That's about it.
Oh, yeah...I'm fighting with my English since 6 months. It's mostly an easy language, even if I realize that I'm doing a lot of mistake talking/writing it, I'm confident that pretty soon it will be better. But I know that if I had to work with English speaking people they will think I'm never been to school...lol

I have to agree with Fashola, it's really different to talk a foreign language, and to be able to participate in business meeting or write good proposals in a language who is not really your. But I'm pretty sure that a lot of you are doing so, and certainly doing it pretty well. That's giving me some hope. May be in few time I will be able to make business with English and US people???

I know the following:
[list][*]Engligh, my first language [*]French, I can get by in France but don't know it very well[*]Latin, I did 2 years of Latin in school so I know it to a reasonable standard[*]German, I have only just started learning this so I don't know much yet

Right now I'm learning French. I was forced to take Spanish for 6 years, and you can see how much I love it since I'm not taking French.

I'm taking a long trip to France and the rest of Europe in two years so I hope I'll have learned French by then.

I also want to learn Latin sometime. Unfortunately I can't learn German because I tend to break out in laughter when I hear the accent (I can't help it, for real!). Japanese looks cool.

But Peter H., if you think England is bad at languages, look at the US. Soon the majority of the population will NOT be English-speaking but Spanish-speaking, and no one knows that language except for Spanish teachers, it seems like.

I studied French for about 6-7 years in school, but I'm not so good at it because who am I going to speak French to around here?

I speak a very little bit of Spanish.

I spend some time in India studying Pali, and ancient Indian language similar to Sanskrit.

I also speak a little bit of Hindi.

Originally posted by d3v

But Peter H., if you think England is bad at languages, look at the US. Soon the majority of the population will NOT be English-speaking but Spanish-speaking, and no one knows that language except for Spanish teachers, it seems like.

Isn't that amazing. There are so many Spanish speakers all around, and yet how many people actually learn more than their 2 years of Spanish in High School